President Nguyen Xuan Phuc attends dialogue with APEC leaders

During the dialogue, the participating leaders discussed ideas and solutions to speed up economic recovery, with an emphasis on promoting international trade and investment. They also shared experiences and policies regarding clean energy transition, digital transformation, green and inclusive growth and protection of people amid rising inflation.

Speaking at the dialogue, President Phuc affirmed that the potential of cooperation between APEC and the European Union (EU) as well as the Gulf countries is huge, stemming from the high complementarity between economies, the foundation of existing economic and trade cooperation, and development orientation.

To fully tap the potential of inter-regional cooperation, he suggested strengthening cooperation to facilitate trade and investment by fixing bottlenecks and improving the efficiency of existing free trade agreements and exploring the possibility to form new trade deals, stepping up international economic connectivity, enhancing trade and investment promotions, and ensuring transparency in economic and trade policies.

At the same time, he proposed sharing experience and holding policy dialogues on green growth and digital transformation, encouraging APEC working groups to exchange with partners from the EU, ASEAN and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and studying the possibility of launching pilot projects on multi-stakeholder cooperation in response to climate change and e-commerce.

It is necessary to consider the possibility of forming an annual dialogue mechanism between APEC and representatives of the EU, GCC, ASEAN and other regional organisations to raise coordination at forums and organisations and maintain their cooperation momentum.

The Vietnamese leader hoped the dialogue will start new effective cooperation programmes to benefit all parties for the common goal of sustainable and inclusive development.

His proposals were welcomed by participating leaders who vowed to consider launching them in the near future.